


G R E Y

by irishais



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: General
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-09
Updated: 2010-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-06 01:06:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irishais/pseuds/irishais
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her first, the boy with the exotic name. Experimental Seifer/Rinoa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	G R E Y

There are fairies fluttering before her eyes, thousands of them, fragments of blues and reds and yellows and purples. Spectral fairies, fluorescent prisms off the ice in her glass.

Ri-no-a.

A toast, then, to the damned and the damned-it-all; kick it back, fast, a chemical burn of vodka and iced tea against her throat. It burns. She coughs, something half-drink, half-laugh.

_Ri-no-a_.

What are you afraid of?

Hand, big, five fingers splayed against her spine, smacking gently—_Ri-no-a_.

Don't die.

Cold, cold, cold like Dante's devil, frozen to his waist in ice and blood. Cold.

Her glass is empty. She wants to set it down hard enough to shatter. Glass fairies, glitter-smashed refractions of lights and rays and spectra. Fantastical science.

Ri-no-a.

Her first, blond, tall, handsome, chest broad, hairless, scarred at the shoulder blades, the waist, the ribs. She touches, touches, touches, her hand—small, pale, soft and his skin solid-warm.

_Ri-no-a. _

Her first. Quick, and it could hurt, but she is too drunk on cold tea and liquor to think it really matters. Her first.

It is over, and she's left against peeling worn upholstery, grey like the sky. Grey doesn't go with her skin. Grey is death, and grey looks comfortable as he sinks back against the seat and smiles at her, cigarette between his lips. Her first. Rebel, dangerous.

His name. She fumbles for it, one word, one letter, and comes up with a slurred out _Sai-fah._ Laughter, his, slippery-sharp, satin torn through by steel.

Ri-no-a.

What does it matter?

Ri-no-a.

He offers her his cigarette, a cheap off-brand, not the sweet-cloves her daddy smokes. She inhales, exhales, coughs again. Ri-no-a, he says, dragging out the _a_ like a sigh. Ri-no-_ah. _

They sit—_silence. _

She waits for him to say her name again, slender fingers around his wrist. He looks. His hand stays where it is.

Silence.

And the boy with the exotic name stubs his cigarette out on the windowpane, ashes smearing across the glass. He lifts her hand to his neck, and she feels his pulse.

_Exhale. _Smoke, filtered grey, flickering up over her chest. She closes her eyes.

_Ri-no-a. _

Don't cry.


End file.
